


this is the road to ruin

by kay_emm_gee



Series: do you got room for one more troubled soul [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Politics, non-endgame Becho, non-endgame Clexa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-26
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-03 11:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5288324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight months. Three seasons. Two people trying to survive any way they can.</p><p>{ A prologue to We Started At the End }</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. November

**Author's Note:**

> My forthcoming story We Started At The End tracks Bellamy and Clarke's return to one another after she leaves Camp Jaha. This is a prologue to that story, a timeline of what they do in the seven months between the end of season 2 and where my story starts.

**n o v e m b e r**

  

The woods are quiet for the most part. The leaves rustle, birds call, and dead brush crackles under her feet, but there are no pleading voices, demanding cries, or angry shouts, and for that Clarke is grateful. Silence envelops her day after day, and it’s a healing balm she never knew she needed. She doesn’t sleep much, because there are voices there too, and the way dead eyes stare at her in accusation while the ghosts to whom they belong scream in agony doesn’t make for restful slumber. Instead, she walks. She walks over rocky hills and between towering trees, across rushing rivers and through sunny meadows. She doesn’t gain much distance, because she is walking in circles. Sometimes she screams in frustration, wishing that she could cut the tether that binds her to her people. She wants to leave, to go far away and never look back. Each crackling step that she takes, though, seems to whisper another name to her, names of people who love her and hate her and respect her and need her. It is like she is torn in two, and she doesn’t know how to stich herself back together. She doesn’t know if she wants to, if she deserves to. Maybe, when you have as many taken lives tallied on your soul as she did, you don’t get to feel whole again. Maybe you also become a ghost, one of a different kind, fated to wander as a hollowed-out shadow until you too become dust and ash.

So she walks, trying to ignore the way her heart beats for home, letting the numbness in her legs work its way up into her chest until she feels nothing there as well.

The dead can’t feel anymore, so why should she?

 

* * *

 

Bellamy never hated his name, not until now. Now, when it was called at almost every moment of the day.

 **_Bellamy,_ ** _Nik is sick, can you take his guard shift?_

 **_Bellamy_** _, we need you at the gate._

 **_Bellamy_** _, did you talk to the Council about that scouting mission?_

 **_Bellamy,_ ** _tell us what your people think about redistributing Section 4 materials._

It had all started when, almost immediately after their return from Mount Weather, Kane had read out the names of the nominated members for the new Council and his had been the first one listed. Hearing those three syllables uttered followed by excited, congratulatory cheers from delinquents and Arkers alike had frozen him in shock. The cacophony only grew after that, as the delinquents had ushered him into a hidden corner of the Ark for a celebration of their own. Officially having one of them on the Council bolstered morale, and, at seeing his people smile genuinely for the first time since their return, Bellamy couldn’t help the warm feeling that bloomed in his chest. He wasn’t naïve enough to think a simple election to the Council would change things, or that he didn’t have a steep uphill battle ahead of him with the Arkers, but, for the moment, seeing his people happy made the task a little less daunting. It reminded him why he was willing to fight for them in the first place.

He thought back to that moment a lot in the following weeks, because it was one of the few things that kept him from giving up all together. Trying to adapt Ark culture to life on the ground was an impossible task, and although many were more willing to listen to the delinquents and their expertise now, Bellamy still had to fight to be heard. Kane more often than not backed him up, and surprisingly Monty volunteered more than once to convince others to listen. The kid’s calm rationality went a long way with the adults, and Bellamy grew more and more thankful for Monty’s support, because it was often his campaigning that got things truly rolling with the Council.

Slowly, though, trust came and soon Bellamy was overrun with requests and complaints and pleas and questions from Arkers of all backgrounds, and those inquiries all began with his name. Some days it felt like he was drowning, because how was he alone supposed to have all of the answers; other days, when he made an injured kid smile with a joke or closed a deal that satisfied two disgruntled parties, he didn’t feel the weight of his name so much. He just took it day by day, also gradually learning to share the burden with others.

Only one person never called his name. Abby resolutely ignored him, not bothering to hide her fury and disapproval. It didn’t bother Bellamy, because if anyone had let his sister leave like he had let Clarke, well, he didn’t know if he would react any differently. Abby had resigned from the Council almost immediately after finding her daughter gone, vowing to go after her and bring her back. Yet again Monty had proved invaluable as he eventually convinced Abby that space was the best thing for Clarke right now. As Bellamy found his place in camp, he and Abby settled into an uneasy truce, giving each other a wide berth as they individually adjusted to life without Clarke.

It wasn’t easy, but Bellamy did it, and not just because Clarke had asked him to do so. There was no other option, really.

_His people, his responsibility._


	2. December

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> blame.
> 
> remembrance.

**d e c e m b e r**

 

She never thought there could be a worse color than the black expanse of space, so tauntingly infinite when the metal box that was their home was so confined.

White is worse, though, she decides. Snow only barely coats the ground, and a few brown-gray patches try and peak through, but the frosty layer bleaches everything out regardless, just as it leaches the heat from her chapped skin. Too brilliantly bright in the sunlight, and not even night can quench its glow. It shines dully in the dark, like polished bone, cracking under her feet as if she was walking over rib cages and femurs, tibias and spines.

Who knows what is beneath her feet, after all. All the ground is a grave, nothing more. She just happens to be one of the dead who it hasn’t managed to bury.

The snow is as sharp as bone too, when she falls and slices her palm on a sheet of icy covering, made from the freezing rain the previous day. Red splatters across the surface, trickling down into the lattice of frozen crystals, spreading and seeping and never stopping.

Bone and blood. Fitting for Wanheda. **  
**

The whisper had come first from a pair of Triku travelers, whose eyes had widened when they saw her across a clearing. Spear tips raised in defense had lowered in deference when they recognized her, the word twisting its way to her over the barren space between them.

_Let us pass, Wanheda._

She knew enough Trigedasleng to flinch at the name, at the honor, at the final nail in her coffin.

_I am become death, destroyer of worlds._

A laugh startled out of her, spooking the two Trikru to make a hasty retreat. She gasped and gasped, caught between a giggle and a sob, because she was Oppenheimer, she was destroyer, she was death.

She was Wanheda.

The three syllables made her chest contract like the icy gusts of wind did, made her stomach clench like the hunger pains did, made her heart crack like her dehydrated lips did.

Wanheda came to her again, when a hunting party sneered it at her, glad to have a different type of game to hunt in this scarce season. She lost them eventually by wedging her way into a cliff crevice to hide—wet, cold, miserable for hours, yet also alive—but their voices, their taunts stayed with her long after.

It fell from the lips of the few other souls she encountered, and it called on the wailing winds that made her shiver and tremble in the night. It shrieked out in the crack of icicles snapping from the trees overhead that never quite managed to hit her, and it followed her, step after step after step, a beat for each stride she took. _Wan-he-da. Wan-he-da._

So now she watches the blood spider out into the snow, the pure-white, bone-white freeze beneath her, and she sits. Her palm throbs, and she pulls out the needle and thread she had managed to trade for from her last proclaimer.

For each stitch that goes in, a letter goes with it. Seven painful pulls and tugs, seven excruciating consonants and vowels. She sews her skin together, sews in her blood and her legacy, trapping both inside.

Bone and blood and death. This is who she is now; this is how she survives. They are one in the same.

She presses on the wound—purposeful, intentional, a masochism in the quiet winter air—and hisses at the pain.

_Wanheda_ , she whispers, and it hurts just the same.

She grimaces in triumph.

* * *

 

Bellamy knew it had been a stupid idea to try and go hunting at this time of year, what with the cold and the lack of tree cover for camouflage. The gaunt faces of his people haunted him, though, and he couldn’t take it any more. It had been a doomed effort from the start, he knew that, which is why he had only taken Monroe and a few other experienced people with him. Even with that expertise, however, they had still landed in a tight spot on the side of a cliff. They had barely made it off all intact, Karter being the most shaken up after he almost fell off the side, until Bellamy dove after him and hauled him back up.

It wasn’t until they were almost back to camp that Bellamy registered a stinging sensation spreading across the back of his upper arm. He sighed, trying to ignore the hint that he was injured. The pain intensified as he checked their meager game haul into the kitchen stores, and he grit his teeth against it after making sure Monroe took Karter to medical to be treated for hypothermia and shock.

No less than five people—two delinquents, one council member, and two guards—stopped him on the way back to his tent. He answered their questions as patiently as he could, because _others before himself_ was his job, always had been. Now, with his position on the Council, it seemed like it would always be that way. By the time he broke off the last conversation, he could feel his sleeve sticking wetly to his skin. With hurried steps, he made a break for his tent, keeping his head ducked so no one could catch his eye with more needs or questions.

When he saw Octavia a few feet ahead of him on the path back to his tent, he bit back a groan, because all he wanted was just a few minutes of solitude. He paused, seriously debating making a run for it even though she clearly saw him, then sighed and continued forward, walking right past her, knowing she would follow. 

“Bell, you’re bleeding!” Octavia rushed to his side, yanking up his sleeve to reveal the gash stretching up his arm. Bellamy sucked in a hiss as the chilly air hit the open wound, and Octavia grimaced in concern.

“I’m aware,” he replied, continuing walking to his tent.

Octavia just trotted on behind him. “The medbay is the other way, idiot.”

“I’m not going to the medbay.”  

“You that scared of Abby?”

“I can handle Abby Griffin,” Bellamy muttered as he shoved the flap to his tent open.

“Then go to the medbay. I’m sure Jackson could help you out. He actually seems to like you, despite his boss’s opinion.”

“I got this,” he replied as he bent down, pulling out his stash of bandages, antiseptic, and other hoarded medical supplies from under his makeshift bed.

Rising up to take a seat on the bed, he flicked a look at his sister and saw her eyes widen in surprise at the collection.

“Got quite the stockpile there,” she said evenly.

“Always a good idea to keep spares around.”

“Bell, that wound looks like it’s going to need more than a bandage.”

Bellamy sighed as he started to unravel one of the cloth strips. “O, I’m fine. I don’t want—I don’t need to go to the medbay.”

His sister stayed quiet as he continued to wrap his injury, not even bothering to laugh as he fumbled trying to do so with only one hand. Instead, she plopped stiffly onto the bed beside him, turning to assess him narrowly.

“She left, Bell. And she’s not coming back. You can’t keep letting her ghost scare you off. This is _your_ home, _your_ people now.”

Bellamy stared straight ahead at the tent wall, refusing to meet what he assumed would be harshness in his sister’s green eyes. Bellamy clenched his jaw, trying not to think of the tired ache that rang in his chest whenever he went into the medbay. It was ridiculous, that after three months, he still expected to see Clarke’s blonde head bustling around in there. They hadn’t even been at Camp Jaha long enough for him to have memories of her in the medbay, but somehow the ones of her from the dropship had morphed into her being here, healing here, talking and planning with him here. So, it hurt when he went in and saw that she wasn’t there, just reminding how screwed up everything had gotten.

“You’re not alone, Bell. Don’t shut us out,” Octavia warned, the bed shifting as she stood.

“I know,” he said, nodding to placate her.

She huffed, as if she saw right through his façade—which she definitely did, because she was his sister. At that, he glared at her in challenge, to which she rolled her eyes and swept out of the tent. Bellamy blew out a breath before leaning back on his elbows, tipping his head back and taking a minute to pull himself together before heading back out to camp. His people needed him, and no matter how heavy the burden was on him, he would bear it, because it was no heavier than the one Clarke, wherever she was now, thought that she carried with her.


	3. January

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> walk.
> 
> grudge.

**j a n u a r y**

 

She walks and she walks, chest heaving as she sucks in dry air.

She cups handfuls of snow into her mouth, easing her raw throat and chapped lips.

She blows on her snow-numb fingers. Her breath dries out her lips.

She eats more snow.

She shivers as she tucks her frozen fingers into her armpits, chilling her all over.

She stumbles as she walks, her frame racked with too many tremors to keep upright.

She falls. She feels cold wetness seep into her clothing.

She stays there. She can’t get up.

She shivers.

She eats more snow.

She blacks out. She sleeps.

She coughs herself awake. She stands.

She walks.

She walks and she walks.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy went to Abby, because he knows how this works. She may not be on the Council anymore, but she still had sway, especially over Kane. The kids weren’t asking for much, just a separate living area that they could call their own. They were tired of living with strangers based on the foster system the Council had set up in the immediate aftermath of Mt. Weather. Bellamy hadn’t fought it at the time; there were other things that he needed to take a stand on. Now, though, with Monty’s agreement, it was finally time to bring their people back together. The Council hadn’t agreed, citing _they’re still children_ , and Bellamy, yet again, reminded them just how grown up some of those ‘children’ were. Those who wanted to stay with their foster hosts could, but he emphasized how many of the delinquents found each other to be family, not strangers.

After deciding to adjourn and think the proposal over, Bellamy knew the Council would say no. So he went to Abby, despite the reluctance he felt. Her face had tightened when he had pulled her aside into the Council room, asking for a minute of her time. It was grudgingly given, and when she heard his proposal, she voiced the same reasons her fellow Council members had.

Still, Bellamy had one last ace in his pocket, though he knew the risk of using it. Regardless, his people needed this, so he pushed forward, no matter the consequences.

“It’s what Clarke would want.” When Abby flinched at his words, Bellamy almost regretted saying them, for bringing her ghost into the conversation. It was not really fair, because it was the same argument that Monty used to convince him to ask Abby for this, and he knew how effective it had been, otherwise he wouldn’t be standing here.

When Abby dropped her head, shoulders rising in acquiescence, however, he was glad for their power, because it got them what they wanted. Even if she wouldn’t say it, he knew it was bringing her around to their side.

“You seem to know my daughter well,” Abby murmured, finally meeting his stare again, her eyes clouded with resignation.

“Better than most,” he replied, shifting uneasily at the defeated look on Abby’s face. It was unnerving, seeing the former Chancellor in such a vulnerable state.

Her next words were barely a whisper. “Better than me.”

Bellamy had no response for that, because while it was a sad fact, both for Abby and for Clarke, it was also unfortunately true. Clearing his throat, he carefully responded, “Only by circumstance, and I probably don’t know her that well anymore.”

“I wish I could believe that,” Abby responded, a hitch in her voice. “If she came back, I don’t know if I could—if she was _here_ , I don’t even know how I would begin to help her. I’m her _mother._ How can I not know her?”

Bellamy unfolded his arms from across his chest, dropping them to his side as he stepped forward to grip the back of the chair in front of him. He watched Abby pace, her own arms now folded, before she stopped in front of him. She stared at him contemplatively, a very small smile appearing on her face before she asked softly, “What was she like, when she first got to Earth?”  

Bellamy paused before answering, deciding if a mother would want the unbiased version or his version. As he took in the sight of her, worry lines and spine of steel that was so reminiscent of her daughter, he realized he knew what Abby Griffin would want.

“Annoying,” he said, lips curving up at his first memories of Clarke. “She was annoying, and righteous, and bossy. Demanding. She hounded me, and everybody else, about going for supplies at Mount Weather, and it didn’t win her any points. I believe I told her to go get them herself, to let the privileged do the hard work for a change.” He paused, then add wryly, “Not my finest moment.”

Abby smiled, her eyes shining even in the dim light of the council room. “I warned her to ignore her instinct to take care of everybody else. I shouldn’t be surprised that she didn’t listen.”

“I’m glad she didn’t,” he admitted. “She was the order that we needed, even as we all chased after chaos. Even as I fought against her every minute at first. She was brave.”

“To go up against you?” Abby asked, eyebrows raised.

Bellamy huffed in amusement at Abby’s doubt at him being a real challenge for her daughter, before correcting her. “Against everyone.”

“Will she—do you think she’ll survive out there?”

Again, looking at the fear now on Abby’s face, Bellamy debated going for the truth or a merciful lie. This time, his decision was different from before.

“Clarke will be okay,” he said slowly. “She’s a survivor. She’ll find a way.”

Abby smiled wanly at him, as if thanking him for the fib. It wasn’t until she crossed to the doorway that she paused and said, “I’ll talk to Kane, for what it’s worth.”

“Thank you.”

Abby nodded, then left, shoulders hunching as she disappeared into the dark, as if warding off the realities no doubt crashing down on her. Bellamy sighed, running a hand over his face. At the very least, even if Kane still said no to the proposal, he and Abby were on better terms. It wasn’t something he needed, or wanted even, but it would make things easier around camp, for everybody.

He closed his eyes, replaying his lie in his head, the most worrisome part being that it would have been true—she had been a survivor, and she would have found a way—if Bellamy had not seen the deadness in Clarke’s eyes as told him ‘ _may we meet again’._

She hadn’t said those words like a promise, but rather a placation, something for him to hold on to while she slipped away.

That was for him to know, though, not Abby. Just one more secret he was keeping for Clarke. His gut clenched because he hadn’t promised her this. She was miles away, who knows where, and she was still asking things of him. And he was still doing it, even as it ate at him, the unfairness of it, because he didn’t have any other options.

It took him a while to leave the Council room, and even when he did, the churning in his stomach wouldn’t stop, the acidic burn of worry and fear and frustration, and even anger. It stayed when he woke the next morning, and it continued the next weeks, growing more bitter, more furious. He fought it, every minute, because there just wasn’t time. There wasn’t time to miss her, or be angry at her, or blame her. So he let it simmer but never boil over. It just lingered, in the background, a slow burn of resentment that, if he was being honest, he had been fighting since the minute he turned around and found her truly gone, regretting that he hadn’t tried harder to make her stay.

He didn’t hate Clarke Griffin, at least not yet, but he was afraid, oh was he afraid, that one day soon, he just might start too.


	4. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> immortal.
> 
> forgotten.

**f e b r u a r y**

 

Clarke stares warily at Sanna, who is resting against the cabin doorway with her arms crossed.

“You’re coming to the fire tonight.”

Snorting, Clarke shakes her head. “No I’m not.”

“Klark.”

“Sanna.” She follows up with a tired sigh, because not even three weeks in this small village was enough to make her feel comfortable enough to join in on the nightly gathering. Sanna had been the one to find her, half-dead and huddled in a snow bank, and only the healer’s persistent care had saved her from frostbite, or worse. Since then, Clarke had been weathering out the winter in her village, reluctantly conceding that she would not survive as a nomad any longer, at least until the cold lessened. She was mostly left to her own devices, and the whispers of Wanheda had been smothered in the first few days. She suspected Sanna was responsible, but the healer probably wouldn’t acknowledge it even if Clarke felt the need to ask. For the most part, Sanna had left her alone, until tonight, that is, when she apparently felt the need to drag Clarke from her very comfortable, self-induced isolation.

“You need to come,” Sanna repeats, more firmly this time.

“I’m fine here.”

“There is talk.”

“Talk?”

“You stay here with us, eat our food, use our shelter, but you do not join the community for meals, or meetings, or—”

“I do my share. I help out with gathering, and hunting, and with you in the healer’s room—”

“Come, Klark.”

Despite the commanding words, Sanna’s tone is soft, edging close to pleading. Guilt pricks at her, not in the life-and-death way that her ghosts and her nightmares triggered, but in the way it used to when Wells tried to drag her to a party on the Ark, or one of the delinquents pleaded for her to play a drinking game with them.

Clarke stands, grimacing, and Sanna smiles.

“I win,” she taunts, and Clarke just grumbles under her breath.

She doesn’t follow Sanna as the healer stumbles her way through the gathered crowd, plopping down onto a crowded log at the edge of the fire. Instead, she lingers in the back, among the flickering shadows cast by the roaring flames. She is a guest, an outsider; she does not belong amongst the rest.

It takes a while for the crowd to simmer down, and only when it does can Clarke hear the soft, raspy voice of the older woman across the group, already a few minutes into a story. Even a few words later, though, she is enthralled, ignorant to her cheeks flaming from the fire’s heat and the shiver running down her spine from the chilly breeze at her back. All that exists is the ebb and flow of the woman’s voice, spinning webs of words around her, around the fire, around the crowd, roping them in to a time long past and a place long gone.

Clarke barely registers the end of it, so quickly does the next story start, this one a recounting of a hunt from last season told by a young warrior. It is boisterous, funny even, and a chuckle escapes Clarke before she can help it, though she sobers quickly, biting her lip repentantly. This is why she did not come, did not dare risk forgetting Wanheda, even for a few minutes.

Her feet shuffle backwards, but still, she does not leave. The next story is from a new mother, about her child learning to walk, and an elderly man tells the next one, which is about his wife who passed away last summer.

“You stayed until the end,” Sanna murmurs to her as they settle into their beds later that night.

Clarke closes her eyes, sighing. “Just this once.”

“Of course.”

She doesn’t bother calling out the skepticism in Sanna’s response, just turns over, ignoring the nagging feeling that she will find her way to the fire and the words again, and soon.

It takes another week for her to do more than just listen, though her first story is all Sanna’s doing, because Clarke couldn’t refuse every set of the eyes in the village staring at her expectantly when the healer announced their visitor had a tale to tell.

She sees the expectations in the fire-lit faces: they want to hear about the mountain, they want to hear from Wanheda. She is not Wanheda here, though, just a visitor passing through, just Clarke.

So, instead, her lips part and her tongue moves, and what comes out of her dry throat, in a trembling voice, is a story about a man who stole an important secret from the gods to give to his people, to protect them from the dangers of a deteriorating world, to provide them with light to fight the starry darkness that threatened to engulf them, but that he was punished, that for giving that light he was deprived of it himself, sentenced to death though he had a daughter whom he loved very much, and how that daughter was punished for helping him, walled into a mountain alone, but not silenced, because she etched their story into the stone, so that even when she was gone, their story would remain.

She is breathing heavily by the time she finishes, each inhale keeping tears at bay. Sanna catches her eye, nodding somberly, then clears her throat and speaks, drawing attention away from Clarke. She immediately backs away, tripping over her own feet until she stumbles into the cabin where she is staying. Then she lets the tears come, rocking back and forth on the edge of her bed, hands gripping the wooden frame. The thick twine that supports her mattress bites roughly into her palms, reminding her that the dark around her is the dark of night, not the dark of her cell in the Skybox, that she can suck in clean air, sharp air, suck it in deeply, greedily, without worrying that each inhale she takes isn’t stealing it from somebody else.

When Sanna returns, Clarke pretends to be asleep, but even as she stares at the wooden slats of the cabin wall, she cannot bring herself to pretend that it will be the last story she tells around the fire.

Two nights later, she tells of the boy-god who dared defy his father and his peers to go below to the earth for his best friend, the boy who forced the gods’ hands by consuming the leaves of the sacred tree, forcing them to let him accompany the girl, to stay by her side even as his absence was felt up above, even as his father wept and raged at the loss, because the boy loved the girl with the golden crown and bloody hands, the girl who ruled the ground below, and he would follow her anywhere.

She tells of the girl who could build life or death with just her bare hands and scraps of metal, and how she held the heart of a flighty boy, who stayed with her, stayed with her always, until she lit the candle of truth and saw the deceit in his eyes and he fled. In this version though, she knows her worth and does not chase after him to the ends of the earth, instead chooses to let him go, though her sorrow and rage explodes in sparks and cinders when he ingests his own potion, impales himself on his own love-tipped arrow.

She tells of the girl who lived under the mountain, who kept the snakes in her hair hidden until push came to shove and she used her immense power and quiet strength for the greater good, though she crumbled to stone when she was finally forced to see her own reflection, because nobody is innocent. She tells of the twins, bound not by blood but by spirit, two boys who could never be separated, how their grins and their tears would rise and fall in tandem because one could not live without the other. She tells of the siblings, the warrior and the truthspeaker, the moonbright girl with the sword and bow and the sunlit boy with the potent, powerful words, how the girl conquered enemies by fight and by grit, and how the boy toppled kingdoms with merely his voice and his wit.

She makes them, all those she has left behind, immortal at least for a time, at least in the moment when it is her turn to speak her truth at the fire.

It is all she can do, as far from them as she is, to not forget them completely. They deserve that much from her at least. This, this little bit of timelessness, she can give them.

It is not much, but it is all she has left.

 

* * *

Bellamy didn’t know why he paused outside the door of Raven’s workroom, but he did.

Usually he barged right in, into their little space, Raven’s and his and Octavia’s and Monty’s. _Delinquent headquarters_ , Harper had said with a ghost of a smile, the first stable one from her since their return. His heart had eased at the sight: slow and steady, but they were getting there.

Not even the council dared to invade Raven’s lair without permission or warning or both, so it was a safe space for them. To plan, to complain, to commiserate, to celebrate, to strategize, to rant, to just sit and wonder why and how they are still here.

Maybe it is the rise and fall of his sister’s voice that halted him, held him back. Maybe it was Raven’s rough growling agreement. Maybe it was knowing what today was (one hundred days gone) and maybe it was the muffled sobs coming from the darkened, deserted medical bay when he had passed by only a few minutes ago.

It didn’t matter why he stopped, though, only that he did, and that he heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear.

“I’m not sorry she’s gone.” The words were all Octavia: blunt and unapologetic. “I’m worried about her, of course, but I’m not sorry she’s gone. Camp is a fucking mess already. With her here, screwed up as she was? We wouldn’t survive her implosion.”

Raven just grunted neutrally.

Octavia just continued, “You’re glad she’s gone, aren’t you? I would be if I were you.”

“You’re not me,” Raven snapped. “And don’t touch that.”

A small slap echoed out into the hall, and Bellamy pressed closer against the wall.

“I said don’t touch that,” Raven repeated, but softer this time.

“Sorry,” Octavia offered.

“For touching the tech, or what you said?”

Bellamy felt his brows rise in surprise at the harshness of Monty’s voice. It was rare the boy raised his voice at all, and even more uncommon with such severity.

Octavia sounded just as startled when she said, “Monty, I—“

“We know. You hate Clarke. We _know._ So shut up about it already.”

“I don’t hate her.”

“Sounds like you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You may not want her here, Octavia, but others do. Abby. Harper. Me. Your brother.”

“My brother doesn’t need Clarke Griffin.”

“No, he doesn’t need her. But it’d be a hell of a lot easier on him if she was here, and he’s allowed to _want_ that.”

“He doesn’t know what he—“

“No, you don’t know! You don’t know what it was like, to be in that room, to make that decision! To have that weight on your soul? You don’t know, and you’re not the one everyone looks to! Not even I am, though I’m at least trying to help your brother, and I was there with them! How can you not see how much better he would be, how much better _she_ would be, if they were together? They are _always_ better together, no matter what’s happened. And you don’t get to say what’s best for him. I don’t either. Only he does. So just shut _up_ about it already, Octavia. Just—shut up.”

Several beats of silence later, and Octavia mumbled out a brief but sincere apology. Monty hummed in grudging acceptance, and then the room fell into an uneasy, quiet truce.

Bellamy let his hand fall softly against the metal wall behind him, blowing out a long breath. He thought he had been doing better, had been less obvious about his resentment and his frustration. Apparently he was not as careful as he thought, and his people fighting about her, and him, was not something any of them needed.

So, with one last deep inhale, he put Clarke and his want and his ache and his anger out of his mind for good, for the good of the camp, of his people, and maybe even himself.

Monty was right. He may want Clarke here, but he didn’t need her.

It was time to let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my headcanon to clear up where Clarke got her stories: Bellamy told Greek myths at the dropship --> Clarke remembered --> she turned those stories into those of her people. Just in case it wasn't clear how I (very loosely) "adapted" those myths to fit The 100:
> 
> Prometheus ~ Jake  
> Persephone/Hades ~ Wells & Clarke  
> Psyche/Cupid ~ Raven & Finn  
> Medusa ~ Maya  
> Castor & Pollux ~ Monty & Jasper  
> Artemis & Apollo ~ Octavia & Bellamy
> 
> Hopefully at least some of this came across above :)


	5. March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two new beginnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I changed this from 7 to 8 chapters (i.e. months) of separation because it worked better with my revised timeline from the subsequent WIP fic. Just means there will be one additional chapter!

**m a r c h**

 

“Where’s Sanna?”

Clarke jerks her gaze up from her stitching to the belligerent warrior—Esa, she thinks—shouting from the doorway.

“She’s away, gathering stocks after the first thaw,” she answers, standing quickly.

The warrior hisses out a few swears, slamming her hand against the doorframe. “We need her. Liahm fell from the cliffs, knocked his head around and gashed his side open.”

“Sanna’s not here,” she repeats. Her voice doesn’t waver, but it wants to, because yet again, life and death are on the line. She’s forgotten what it feels like, and it makes her sick.

“We need a healer!”

“Isn’t there anyone else?”

“She hasn’t picked an apprentice yet,” Esa barks in reply, not angrily, just worriedly. “We need someone, now. When will she be back?”

Clarke’s head is beginning to feel light, dizzy almost, and her hand twitches by her side.  “Not until tomorrow. She needed to go past the river, and she didn’t want to risk crossing back over in the dark.”

“Then I will go to TonDC for their healer. We have no other choice.”

Esa sweeps away before Clarke can blink, and she hears the warrior shouting for a horse. Blood rushes in her ears, nearly drowning out Esa’s further commands, but somehow, a faint moan—Liahm’s—makes it through.

With a start, Clarke bursts out of Sanna’s cabin, having made her decision. “I can do it!”

Esa pauses mid-mount, sliding back down to squint at Clarke warily. “What?”

“I used to be a healer. Before. I can do it.”

Esa’s doubting, almost accusatory look makes Clarke shift uneasily. It has been months since she has done any major procedures, and her stomach rolls as she remembers the last one (Finn, the knife, her mother’s voice over the intercom, Raven yelling, Lincoln bleeding, the hurricane raging outside). Her palms grow sweaty, and she resists the urge to rub them off on her pants. No reason to make Esa more distrustful.

“You can do it,” Esa drawls, enunciating each syllable carefully.

“I can do it,” Clarke repeats, for the final time, lifting her chin in challenge.

In response, Esa throws her reins to the younger girl by the horse’s head, then shouts for Liam to be brought into Sanna’s cabin.

It takes Clarke a minute to adjust to the dark inside again, sunlight starry in her eyes. She blinks, though, and sees Liahm, face twisted in pain, eyes cloudy with confusion, chest bloody, skin torn.

_Possible concussion._

_Slash wound._

_Minor cuts and bruises._

After taking a deep breath, Clarke steps forward, quietly asking for supplies and tools to sew him up, as the gash to his side takes priority. A first decision made, and she knows it is the right one, but she can’t help feeling lost anyways. Her hands shake too much as she begins to clean the wound, like they did during her first days on the ground. Her gut clenches, threatening to squeeze her lunch back up, because it has been too long since she has done this, since she has made her hands save a life instead of take one. It seems wrong to her, to put her hands—bloody hands, blistered hands, hands caked in dirt from a thousand graves—so close to the cut.

She does it anyways, cleaning, then stitching, then bandaging. Her fingers eventually ghost up to his head, probing and pressing and fluttering when Liahm cries out in pain. Her palm presses down, applying a rag-wrapped clump of lingering snow to the bump from his fall to reduce the swelling. Her thumb wipes away the flecks of blood on his face, smoothes down the pained lines creasing his forehead.

It is only later, after Liahm is stabilized, sleeping painfully but also restfully in Sanna’s cabin, that Clarke’s hands press to her own skin: one on her stomach, one to her mouth, because she can’t hold it in any longer. She is far beyond hearing range of the village in the forest when she finally lets out a strangled sob, and then dry heaves, everything bad and good and guilty and sorry inside of her rushing up her raw throat.

_She could have killed him._

_But she didn’t._

After she chokes out the last of her nerves, she collapses to her knees, shaking with fear and relief. Her hands dig into the damp muck of dirt and leaves beneath her, which grinds grittily under her fingernails and cakes thickly into the lines of her palms.

Her hands look better this way—dirty, grimy, soiled—then they did clean, she tries to convince herself.

Still, as she picks herself and begins to walk back to the village, she can’t get the image of them glowing a dull, unsullied white in the dimness of Sanna’s cabin, bleached with moonshine and renewed purpose.  

 

* * *

 

Bellamy didn’t know if it was the warm weather that made their luck turn around, but he was thankful for the gentle spring breezes that ushered in more than just relief from the snow and ice. The arrival of a Grounder diplomatic contingent had been a surprise, and an unwelcome one at first. Resentment at their offer of aid had been Bellamy’s first reaction, because where had they been when Lincoln had ventured back during the worst of the winter to plead for aid? Not willing to help at that point, for sure. It had been a brutal winter as they learned to cope all on their own. Lincoln’s knowledge had been invaluable, but he was just one man, and they had struggled, greatly. 

At Monty and Lincoln’s urging, however, Bellamy accepted the offer to trade their survival knowledge for the Ark’s technology. His logical side, which had been relying more on in these past few months, knew it was the right move, even though his stomach rolled at the thought of the lives that could have been saved if help had come earlier. No sooner had the agreement been finalized than another group eventually emerged from the tree line carrying all sorts of supplies, with a familiar face leading them.

 _You were there for my people, Bellamy of the Skaikru_ , Echo had said when they arrived at the gate, a smile lurking at the corners of her mouth. _So we will do the same for yours._

 _About time_ , Bellamy had responded dryly, though he was surprisingly touched by her words.

The first few weeks of the Grounder presence in the camp had been tense. Many of the Arkers were still bitter at the Commander’s betrayal, and they wanted to take it out on their visitors. Eventually, though, when the hunting hauls improved and gifts of pelt clothing were passed around, accompanied by a firm and honest admission from the Council that they _needed_ help, the complaints diminished significantly. After that, the momentum at Camp Jaha shifted, rocketing forward as they began to build more permanent shelters, plant food, and learn the terrain, all with their allies’ help.

The dire energy that had permeated the camp air during the winter had disappeared finally, and it felt damn good. There was a lightness in everyone, including Bellamy. More often his nights now ended in conversation with the delinquents or a drink with some of the younger guards whom he and Miller had befriended. He even had a chance to do some more mundane tasks, like scouting and hunting trips.

Everything at Camp Jaha had been progressing so smoothly that the nightmares took Bellamy by surprise. It had been on his second hunting trip that they had come, in full force, just as terrifying and suffocating as they had been during the month after the mountain. The night of their return, Bellamy had woken in a cold sweat on the forest floor, taking a few minutes to suck in gasping breaths as he stared at the stars peaking through the budding branches above him. After their four-month absence, he thought the nightly terrors of his capture had vanished for good, but apparently they were just waiting for his defenses to be down again. His skin crawling from the memories, he rose up, intending to walk off the anxiety. He hadn’t gotten far from camp when he heard someone following him. Expecting to have to make a half-assed excuse to Miller about patrolling, Bellamy found the words stuck in his throat when Echo emerged.

 _I get them too,_ was all she said. _They don’t go away. You just learn to deal with them._

Bellamy twirled the knife in his hand, watching her. _How?_

Echo walked towards him, placing her hands on his chest when she got close enough. _This is one way._

This kiss was expected, because he had seen the intention in her eyes as she had walked over. After all this time, Bellamy knew his skills at reading people had only improved. The way his chest relaxed as her mouth opened under his was a surprise, however. It was nice, he realized, to do something not for the greater good, something that was just for him. He almost laughed at the irony of what his life was like now compared to his first few nights on the ground.

The thought soured, however, when he realized some of those girls were dead, and that Echo was kissing him because she was just as haunted as he was. Still, as clothes fell to the forest floor and she backed him into a tree, the threads of pressure in his chest continued to untangle. So, he let himself go, because she was giving and he could take, just for tonight.

Two nights later, however, when he woke to the sound of her muted growls and whimpers, he shook her awake and towed her away from their group of friends to repay the favor. That was how it began, and it continued when they got back to camp, slipping into each other’s tents after hard days or terror-ridden nights. Bellamy knew it wasn’t an exchange anymore, that they weren’t keeping score. Instead, her touches and his kisses, her moans and his laughter were a message, a momentary and mutual shout into the abyss: _you are not alone._

They both knew it wasn’t something built to last, but her fierce smile lit a fire in Bellamy, one of companionship and solidarity that he had been missing for far too long. So he smiled back, determined to enjoy her company for however long they had. 


	6. April

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sins of the past.
> 
> all wounds heal with time.

**a p r i l**

 

Bent over the elusive plant, Clarke curses inwardly when she hears the branch snap behind her. She didn’t expected to be ambushed out here, not so close to the village. All she has at hand immediately is the sharp, short blade she uses for shearing off leaves and small branches. Her larger dagger is at her waist, hard to reach at her angle. She will have to make due, though, if she wants to escape unscathed.

As she twists around, though, fear turned to rage when she sees Lexa and her entourage, appearing out of the trees as slicky as they had disappeared into the darkness that night at the foot of the mountain.

With a sharp cry, the blade instinctively flies from her hand, aimed right at the green-eyed, brown-haired girl, her mirror self. Lexa flinches when the blade lands in the tree trunk behind her, just a hair away from her ear.

Grunting, her guards surge forward immediately, and Clarke draws her weapons, tensing as she readies for battle and eventual capture.

“Hod op!”

The guards have momentum despite the call to halt, however, and they swing out at Clarke, who parries with equal fervor. This is the fight she’s been waiting for, after all. She isn’t about to give in because Lexa is yet again running from a battle.

“Hod op!” Lexa screams, knocking her own protectors away.

Clarke rasps out another cry and slams into her, and they collide into a tree. In a flash, her other knife is at Lexa’s throat, the glinting blade trembling against the pale skin of her neck. She focuses on the thrum of her pulse, the way it flutters—weak and vulnerable, just like anybody else’s--and how she holds yet another life in her hands.

Her eyes snap up to Lexa’s face and she’s drowning in green (the trees at the dropship, the sickly cast of light in the mountain’s cage room) and brown (the soft glow of Lexa’s tent, the dirt covering so many graves), and she presses the blade close, just because she can.

“Ste ai gonplei odon?” Lexa asks quietly.

_Is my fight over?_

Clarke wants to scream, because it would be easier if that were a taunt. Instead, Lexa says it like a question she really doesn’t know the answer to.

So she pulls away, nearly stumbling over her feet to put distance between her and the woman who cost her everything.

“I’m not you,” Clarke hisses harshly, sheathing her blade. “I don’t decide who lives and who dies.”

One of the guards sneers under his breath _wanheda_. Lexa’s expression hardens, but Clarke just turns her back, kneeing the offending guard in the groin as she passes. Nobody stops her, and she is disappointed, only because the need for this fight still pulses in her veins, and it frightens her that she may have lost her chance to feed its greed.

Later, when she is furiously stripping healing bark off the branches Sanna collected and the horn sounds out in the yard, she understands why they didn’t stop her. Rage surges though her again, because _they were here._ They didn’t need to stop her, not when they were following right in her footsteps.

“The Commander is here,” Sanna exclaims breathlessly when she rushes in. “She’s staying on her way to Polis, for the summer summit.”

Clarke doesn’t say a word, just continues stripping the bark. Even when Sanna pleads—then orders—her to come greet Lexa, or to attend dinner that night honoring their leader, she just stays silent. Sanna is her friend, and reads between the lines (she knows enough about the Mountain, and after) but she is also a subject of the Commander and stiffens with every word and suggestion and argument that Clarke ignores. It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, that Lexa and her position is tainting this too.

The bitterness drips down her throat as she eats dinner alone in the healing hut while the celebration swells outside, pools in her stomach as she lays in bed, awake long after even the last revelers have gone to bed. It sinks into her very bones, vying with the aching sadness that has taken up residence there since she took her first step away from the camp gate. These last few months had made her think she had managed the pain well, but now? Now she knows she was just fooling herself.

Before she knows it, she is slipping past the guards into Lexa’s tent. Moonlight falls on the woman’s restful face, and Clarke stands at the edge of the bed, staring down and having trouble breathing. It only takes a minute, because although Lexa lets herself go in sleep, the commander is always vigilant, and then she is blinking up at Clarke in the darkness.

“How do you do it?” Clarke croaks, finally asking the one question that has been haunting her all these months. “How do you?”

Three breaths, and then Lexa whispers in a broken voice, “I don’t know.”

Anger courses through Clarke again, because it’s not what she wants to hear. She wants an answer, something that will make the nightmares stop and the voices quiet, some type of blade to slice through all the ties of guilt she has on her soul, to let it float free again so the lives she has taken don’t drag her down into the grave with them. The fury grips her chest, her lungs in an ironclad hold, and she goes numb.

Then hands grip her face, and Lexa is there, standing in front of, staring her down with panicked eyes, trying to get her to breathe.

“Breathe, Clarke. Breathe!”

Clarke’s hands fly up to grip her wrists, tightly, but she doesn’t know if it is to take away her grip or keep it there. A breath, a beat of her pulse, and Clarke surges forward, pressing her mouth to Lexa’s. Sloppy, full of heat, she tries to pry her lips open, to find out her secret: _did you kiss me, or did the commander? Did you mean it, or was I just a pawn in your game?_ She wants to pretend, to be somebody else, to be somebody who can have this, have something that the ground can’t shatter.

She gets her answer—back in the tent that golden day, she had kissed a lost girl with a bare face and a bleeding heart, not a commander in war paint with a soul made of iron--when Lexa jerks away, letting out a sorrowful sigh of dissent.

“Clarke, you don’t want this,” she says sadly, wistfully, almost painfully.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” she chokes out angrily. “Don’t tell me—”

“ _Clarke_.”

It’s the plea in Lexa’s voice that finally breaks her, and hot tears spill down her cheeks, because she still isn’t ready and now may never be, but even if she was, the commander still stands in their way, and it’s breaking both of them.

“I’ll go,” Clarke says dully, wiping at her eyes.

“You don’t have to.”

She wavers as Lexa sinks down on her makeshift bed of furs and blankets, looking small amongst the piles of cloth.

“I should go,” she amends stiffly. “I can’t stay.”

She waits for the words— _I’m sorry_ —but Lexa just stares at her, and so Clarke turns away, slipping out as silently as she slipped in.

Lexa leaves the next day, and Clarke doesn’t watch her depart, though she knows the moment she is gone, because her heart swells with relief and regret all at once.

They didn’t stand a chance, the two of them, because she couldn’t love someone who already belongs to someone else, to something more. As she sits in the hut, staring blankly at her work, she wonders if this is the cruelest thing the ground has ever done to her: taking away something before it even began, like how the late frost stole across the new spring shoots, killing them off in their prime.

“Are you alright?” Sanna asks later, and Clarke just shrugs, because she really doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know if she will ever be okay, but for the first time, she thinks, just maybe, that she is at peace with that.

 

* * *

 

Octavia shrieked as Bellamy hoisted her over his shoulder. He just grinned when she pounded on his back, demanding to be put down.

“I’m not five anymore! I’m a grown woman!” She yelled, voice nasally from being half-upside down. “I can walk to my own birthday party!”

Bellamy couldn’t help the buoyant feeling that welled up in his chest at her words. _Grown woman_. Today his baby sister was eighteen years old, a birthday he never thought he’d see her reach.

“Grown woman,” Miller scoffed as he walked next to them. “Yesterday you were running around with face paint on, helping the kiddos in day care ‘liberate’ the rabbits from their cages.”

“They're too cute to eat!” Octavia complained, her hand hitting Bellamy’s thigh instead of Miller like she had intended.

“They’re what got us through the end of winter, O.”

“I still don’t have to like it,” she grumbled.

By the time they left the dusky yard, and Octavia realized she wasn’t going to get her training finished for the day, she stopped squirming. Satisfied, Bellamy righted her, and Octavia squawked again as she regained her footing.

“Bully,” she muttered, pinching his bicep. “I wanted to do inventory before the party.”

“Hey,” he called softly, catching her hand before she followed Miller into the dining hall where the celebration. “You deserve a break.”

Octavia rolled her eyes—okay, sure, she was the kettle, he was the pot—but she grinned, squeezing her fingers around his. “I’ll only try if you will.”

“Monty has taken care of that.”

“Awesome. I hope Kane gets drunk again. Now that would be a birthday gift I’d love to get, seeing that another time. He’s got some pretty hilarious dance moves.”

Bellamy groaned as she herded her into the room, but the disturbing images of Kane on the dance floor disappeared quickly, replaced by the smiling, cheering faces of his people as they greeted his sister on this important day.

She was swept from his side almost instantly, bopping from group to group as she reveled in the attention. Fondness washed over him, because she was meant for this, to touch so many people’s lives. She would have suffocated in that room of theirs on the Ark, her whole world whittled down to only two people, even if she had loved them with all of her heart. The ground might have taken a lot from all of them, but it gave Octavia a life and her freedom, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to hate it as much as he should.

When it came time for her gift, a project he had gotten Kane, Abby, and Raven to pitch in for, he nearly choked up as he began his speech. Miller and Raven heckled him for it, but he just glared at them before continuing to explain his sister’s story, and how she had been discovered, all because she didn’t have a tiny piece of metal that was her own, an id chip.

“Eighteen is a big one, O, and I know you don’t need this anymore. You probably never needed it, because you’ve always known who you were, even when others, even me, couldn’t see it: a brave young woman, who always stands up for what is right and good. Even so, because I now can, I want to give you this.”

Taking a deep breath, he handed over the tiny, wrapped box. Octavia took it, face serious, unwrapping it carefully. When she pulled it out—a small rectangle of metal that read _Octavia Blake, Camp Jaha_  and hung from a thin metal chain—her eyes widened, watering slightly.

“Thank you,” she breathed, then launched herself at him in a tight hug. “You’re right. I don’t need it. But you— _thank you._ It’s perfect.”

Bellamy chuckled into her temple, cupping her head with his hand protectively. If he was honest, this was as much for him as for her, and she knew that. This was her day, but they were the Blakes, never quite as separate as they should be.

“Go get drunk, but don’t let me see,” he muttered gruffly before pulling away. “I’m on the Council now. Can’t condone drunk and disorderliness.”

His sister just cocked an eyebrow at him, huffing under her breath. “Despot,” she teased.

“Delinquent,” he retorted with a grin, tweaking her nose for good measure.

She let out a peal of laughter that had everyone in the room looking at them, and contentment surged through him as he realized no one saw her as the girl under the floorboards anymore, and they never would again.

She was Octavia Blake, plain and simple, and he had never felt more proud of her than as she stood in the center of that room, finally free to be who she really was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So originally there was going to be much more Clexa, but I discovered hate hookups/sex just aren't something I can write with the skill/finesse it requires to do it justice. So in my head it happened, I guess? Feel free to interpret how you choose.


	7. May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decisions, decisions. 
> 
> To stay. To leave.

**m a y**

 

Clarke hitches her sack higher up her back, scowling at the city skyline. She really doesn’t want to be impressed with Polis, but—it is everything they never could have had in space. Jealousy and awe and anger roll her gut into knots.

This is never how she imagined arriving at this city. She wasn’t supposed to be alone, on a mission to prevent the destruction of her people, yet again.

Threat isn’t imminent, but the ground has taught her to head off danger before it grew too much to handle. And from the minute Sanna had told her of the midsummer summit at Polis and how twelve— _twelve_ , not thirteen—tribes had been invited to solidify another alliance, worry had thrummed in her veins.

She may not live with Skaikru anymore, but she is damn well going to make sure they stay alive and safe. To stay alive and safe on the ground, they needed to come to an agreement with the Grounders, and an agreement couldn’t be formed if they were left out of the summit.

Stepping forward, she strides towards the entry gate, determined not to leave the city limits until Lexa has personally issued an invitation to her people.

*          *          * 

“No.”

Clarke tenses. “No?”

“You can’t expect me to—“

“Trust me, I don’t expect anything from you, Lexa. The last time I did that I ended up standing at the base of a mountain by myself,” she snaps. She looks down, determined not to feel anything at the sorrow she sees flash across the commander’s face.

“There have been skirmishes since the mountain. And talks of secret dealings between Skaikru and Azgeda.”

“You can’t blame my people for being hostile. And I can bet they didn’t start any fights, if they even did happen, nor would they double deal. Bellamy would never—“

“People change.”

“You don’t know him.”

Lexa huffs, and Clarke sets her shoulders back stubbornly.

“The other leaders won’t like it,” the commander finally says, slowly, reluctantly.

“Tough shit.”

“I can’t guarantee Skaikru will be accepted into the alliance even if they attend the summit.”

“They at least deserve the chance.”

“Don’t you mean we?”

Clarke turns her head, staring at the window and the harsh sunlight outside. Clattering and yelling and the sounds of urban life, so foreign to her, echo up from the street below.

“You should stay. For the summit.”

“I can’t.”

“Really. Sanna needs you that badly?”

“Lexa.”

“I need your help.”

A dark laugh escapes Clarke, and then another. It spills out of her like blood from a infected wound, oozing and poisonous and deadly. One of Lexa’s guards shifts forward defensively, which makes her laugh even harder.

“Clarke?”

The concern in Lexa’s voice makes her want to continue laughing, but she is running out of breath. So she chokes out a few more before composing herself.

“You’re serious.”

“Fighters are going missing, and I need someone not connected to me to find out why and how.”

“Missing?”

“From the fighting pits. Never the strongest, but the second placers, runner ups, anyone who is good but wouldn’t be immediately missed. None of my people can get close.”

“Why should I care?”

“You don’t need to. But I thought you might want to stay.”

“For you?” Her words are sharp and biting as a blade. The silence that followed is even more so.

Still, Clarke doesn’t feel a refusal forming either. She isn’t going to stay for Lexa, but—her people would be here soon. Going home isn’t something she wants, not even now, but the knowledge that they were going to be here settles heavy in her chest.

It takes her a minute to remember what it feels like—wanting something. She _wants_ to see her people, and it scares her more than she could comprehend.

“I’ll stay.”

Lexa’s lips part in surprise. Clarke feels like doing the same, shock washing through her. She really is going to do it; she is going to stay for the summit.

“I’ll introduce you to your contact later, and she can get you set up with some place to live.”

“I’ll find my own way. Can’t be connected to you, remember?”

Lexa grimaces but then nods. Clarke turns on her heel and strides out of the room, tamping down the urge to run.

She is staying, and she wonders if this is the one choice, out of all the difficult ones she has made on the ground, that she will come to regret the most.

 

* * *

 

Bellamy stared at the thick, yellowed sheet of paper sitting on the Council table, frowning as he reread the proclamation for a third time. When warriors carrying the Commander’s sigil had arrived at the camp gate that morning, he knew it wouldn’t be good. His suspicious had been confirmed when the warriors had delivered a message from Lexa, requesting their presence at the clan summit, which would be held in Polis starting on the summer solstice. Though it had been framed as an invitation, the careful way Lincoln had regarded the message told Bellamy their inclusion was less of an appeal and more of a demand.

 _We should accept_ , Kane had argued. _We put ourselves at risk if an alliance is formed and we aren’t a part of it._

 _With the Mountain gone, I doubt there is going to be an alliance. We’re more likely to get pulled into the clan wars. Hell, the summit might turn into a blood bath, for all we know,_ another Councilor shot back.

As Bellamy listened to the Council argue, he looked to Lincoln on the edge of the room, who had remained silent but tense throughout the debate. Reading his faces, he sighed, knowing there was only one choice to be made here.

"We go," he said definitively, interrupting the conversation. "If an alliance is formed, we need to be a part of it. We can extend our exchange terms with to other clans as a peace offering, and use our relationship with them as an example of our goodwill and worth as allies. And while there is a good chance things won’t go well, we’ll at least be aware of the political situation."

Kane considered his words for a minute before slowly replying, "So, best case scenario, we get an alliance. Worst case, we get advance warning of war arriving at our door."

Bellamy nodded, and Kane stared down the rest of the Council. "Any objections?"

Taking in a deep breath, Bellamy watched each member for signs of dissent, but none came.

"It’s decided," Kane announced. "We leave for Polis in a month."

A chill ran through Bellamy as the room dissolved into tense conversation and frantic bustling, knowing without a doubt that as much as they needed to go to Polis, it would bring nothing but trouble for him and his people.


	8. June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things they don't want to remember.

“Another black eye?”

Clarke glares at the older woman lurking in the kitchen. She hadn’t counted on Caro fussing over her the way she did the stray children she took care of. Still, it was almost dawn, and here she was, waiting up like Clarke was some wayward ward, sneaking in past curfew.

“You should be in bed,” she tells her landlady. Roommate. Closest thing she has to a friend in Polis.

“You should put some salve on that wound before the bruise sets in deep.”

Clarke ignores her, instead retrieving a cup and pouring herself a glass of water from the large tank they fill up every week after boiling it.

“I know what you’re doing in the pits. It’s not going to work.”

She nearly chokes on her next sip. “And what do you know?”

The chair creaks as Caro stands. “Fighting isn’t going to get you the information you want. You don’t need to attract attention. You need to _listen._ ”

“Like you ever do,” Clarke snaps.

“Fade into the background, and just listen. There will be plenty of time to fight later.” Caro pauses, considering her carefully. “I’ve seen those hands heal. The children appreciate it. It’s time you put them to good use again.”

Clarke watches her retreat to her rooms in the barely-there morning light, wondering if she is right. She had approached her mission at the pits forcefully, figuring that was what had always worked with the Grounders before. They knew who she was though, and she was spending all of her time fighting challengers instead of using it to find out the reason for the missing fighters.

Sighing, she wonders if Caro is right. Maybe she needs to change her approach. Take a break, return as a healer, refuse any and all challenges. Then maybe she would find her answers, finish the mission, and then—

And then she doesn’t know what. Polis is closer to home than anything she has felt in a while, but she still doesn’t know if she can stay.

Temples pounding and too tired to do much else, Clarke simply trudges up the stairs to her sparse room, ready for nothing other than her bed.

 _Later_ , she thinks as she tries to drift off into yet another night of uneasy sleep. _I’ll figure it out later._

The memory of the same words, spoken in a rougher, deeper voice, startle her almost awake, and she swears she can smell blood and gunpowder and mud. Her pulse races as she remembers he could be in the city by now.

Sleep doesn’t come for a long time after that.

 

* * *

 

Leaving camp had been harder than Bellamy had expected. As they set off, he kept looking back at the gate, feeling his stomach clench as it grew smaller and smaller every time he glanced back at it.

 _They’ll still be there when we get back_ , Octavia said firmly. _And we **will** be back._

 _I know_ , Bellamy had replied gruffly, shifting in his saddle and ignoring the careful way his sister was watching him. Kicking his horse into a faster gait, he moved to the front of the group, signaling to Kane to pick up the pace. His anxiety dulled as the hours passed and they moved further out of familiar territory, but he couldn’t quite shake it entirely, because the last time one of them had left, she hadn’t come back.

As they rode on, Bellamy found himself thinking of Clarke, for the first time in a while. Somewhere between fighting off frostbite and forging his place on the Council, Bellamy had stopped worrying about her, and where she was, and how she was doing. There just wasn’t room for her anymore, not when so many others needed his attention.

He shook off the thoughts of her creeping back in; it was unlikely, with as wide as the world was, that he would run into her on this trip. With the complications this alliance was likely to bring forth, he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted, not by a ghost of a girl whom he feared was dead, or worse.

So Bellamy breathed deeply, letting the warm, earthy air fill his lungs, and yet again put Clarke from his mind.

They’d be back, whether to announce peace or war, that he would make sure of. So he spurred his horse forward, looking towards the horizon and ready to take on whatever the ground threw at them next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not super happy with this ending, but it's time to move on to the actual fic. I can't keep waiting. So. Ta-da! Hope you enjoyed this and tune in for the following story We Started At The End

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr (kay-emm-gee)!


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